The
Quantum Theory, so spoken about in Physics classes for so long,
but rarely anyone understands what it means or who created it,
and even once those two questions become answered so many more
questions become open. Let's begin at the very beginning of time
with who were the master minds of this whole giant
theory.

This
began with two men in the early 20th and
21st centuries. The first one is a man who many know
all too well, sir Einstein, and the other is one that isn't as
known to science students as one might home Max Planck. Who is
Planck, one may be asking. Well, Planck is the scientist who
introduced the idea of discontinuity, which later on was given
the name quantum (Carson). Einstein doesn't really need that
much background, given that the majority of people already know
what he has done in the science community, and know who he
is.

Back
to Planck. In the 20th century, Planck established a
paper releasing his findings on a small experiment he had been
doing on his house late one night. What he came up with, was this
constant h. According to Planck, h proved itself to be a rather
small number however it wasn't zero. How it could it be zero,
when the results didn't conclude to that number? It didn't make
sense. The early 20th century was the time when the
Quantum Theory "era" was developing, people coming out with all
of these ideas, but this would take so much longer to become an
actual reality that people didn't expect; however, one step in
the proper direction was the discovering of Planck's constant,
h (Carson).

When
people write down a formula, most people expect to know where it
comes from or how you justified its means, correct? Well welcome
to Planck's word during a lecture he gave in to the German
Physical Society on the spectrum of light in 1900. He gave the
audience a formula, but not one they had seen before, one that
had many new results and ones that people were not expecting.
However Planck didn't stop there, he wanted to justify the means
of his formula by physical status. Planck started with thinking
of a piece of matter, he was quite amazed that this one bit of
matter is cumulated from a dozen electric charges; he added on by
saying that if in certain proportions he could distribute this
energy and somehow keep the proportionality of the energy, the
same [h]. The formula he developed was £=hf.
At the time, however, despite being recognized for his scientific
achievement, Planck did not go one to giving his idea the name
quanta nor did he really explain the true meaning behind his
works, so only as time went on, did the true purpose of what he
had been trying to do finally come crawling out of the shadows
(Carson).

Surely not only Planck was a genius behind this quanta endeavor,
which is more than true, this is when Einstein comes into play
around 1905. Everyone thinks, right? And everyone ponders what is
going on around them more and more each day, until they can't
think any longer, well for Einstein, hearing a name being thrown
around from one place to another is nothing easy to come by.
Around this time Planck was just now coming into fame for his
development of the idea of h, which led Einstein to
think about what if this discontinuity was a product of light
too? Could they be two properties of the world that tie hand in
hand together that no one ever knew? What he began with was the
idea of Black-Body radiation, something both Planck and Einstein
didn't see eye-to-eye on, in fact, their scientific views were so
different, it was as if the two ignored one another completely
when coming up with their scientific studies
(Carson).

When
Einstein went on to try and prove the idea of Black-Body
radiation, his result wasn't something that was expected, in fact
it turned out to be something quite silly and not headed by many
in the scientific community. In the end, Wein's Law, prove to be
right both against Einstein's thoughts and Planck's. Using all
the other discoveries coming out, Einstein developed an equation
for energy having to do with radiation called "Energy Quanta," in
these modern times, we call it E=hf
(Carson).

This
discovery led way to the idea that maybe, just maybe,
discontinuity might go on to be part of the electromagnetic
world. So, like all things in the science world, two things,
concepts, can be tied together with another concept. Though both
Einstein and Planck were studying the same thing, this is where
their concepts and methods of attacking them become different.
Planck looked at moving around charges, shifting them into more
than one body but still keeping the energy equal, Einstein
applied thermodynamics to the light itself; later on in history,
Einstein's proved to be the one most testable and most provable
(Carson).

How
many people thought that the Quantum Theory might actually go
beyond light? How many just sit and drink tea as they ponder this
thought while reading classic literature? None, however Einstein
did. Einstein's theory could go much deeper than anyone ever
thought about how light if effected by the idea of quanta, and
how possibly the light atom might affect this theory as well -
that is where Planck fell short, seeing as Planck didn't think to
account for the atom's in light when developing his much thought
out, theory (Carson).

In
the scientific field, there always appear to be some rising star
that takes the fame from someone else, in 1910, that was the case
with chemist Walther Nernst, where he brought the idea of quanta
into specific "heats", if you will. Nernst didn't disagree with
Einstein's statements, in fact he simply used them as a topic of
discussion and looked at them as something that could be added
onto and or expanded on with great detail. With Nernst in
attendance, come 1911, Einstein spoke about the specific heats of
his theory during the Solvay Congress; which was more like a
social gathering for people to discuss what he had come up with
in the scientific field. It was mutually agreed upon during this
congress that the main realm that discontinuity would prove its
worth would be only proved by applying the technique of
quantizing oscillations applied, of course, to the line spectra;
in conclusion, bringing about the idea of light emissions and
absorption from the substance next to it (Carson).

The
atom began coming into play with Neil Bohr's creation of the Atom
Model in 1913. Consider the creation of the atom model, a layout
for so many other things; it was like a missing puzzle, if you
will. Something that needed to be written down on paper so that
people understood what was actually happening with the atoms of
this universe. Bohr concluded that when an electron shifts orbits
[orbital rings] it does so in this sort of quantum leap. Meaning,
the energy difference between the initial and final orbits is
released therefore causing the photons to be created. Simple,
correct? Bohr's model was based on his own observations created
by looking at a white light spectrum, and the electric emission's
caused by such a thing. Bohr suggested that each color
corresponds with a certain amount of energy, however Bohr also
came across the discovery that when light given by the Hydrogen
atom passes through a prism, only a select aray of colors shine
through; and from this discovery, he went on to try and fight the
light that a single atom releases. Because of Bohr's model of the
atom, people were able to use this creative look at the way an
atom works, to develop deeper branches of thought onto the
Quantum Theory (Coffey).

Around 1925, the idea of Quantum Mechanics came into play, which
led to the completion of the Quantum Theory. Heisenberg's famous
paper, was the idea of tying everything that had ever been stated
on the topic, together, bringing Bohr, Einstein and Planck all
together to create the final definition of the Quantum Theory.
Another scientist named Erwin Schrodinger got his idea for a
paper in 1926 on the same matter from Heisenberg's paper of '25.
Being friends with Heisenberg, a man named Louis de Broglie, took
a deeper look at his friends theories, that instead of looking
at the Quantum Theory as dealing with atom structure, one may
want to look at it in terms of wave-particles and slowly add on
to create a deeper understanding of the entire atom
(Carson).

To
this day, people are still trying to develop new methods for the
Quantum Theory, still trying to unhinge what the many scientists
of the past have tried so hard to piece together. Despite their
efforts, none have succeeded in proving Heisenberg, Einstein,
Planck, Nernst, Bohr, and Shrodinger wrong in their very unique
discovers that were far ahead of their time.